VBT – Meditation 59.0
OH BELOVED, PUT ATTENTION NEITHER ON PLEASURE NOR ON PAIN, BUT BETWEEN THESE.
Stay In The Middle
Everything is polar, and the mind moves from one polarity to another, never staying in between. Have you known any moment when you were neither happy nor unhappy? Have you known any moment when you were neither healthy nor sick? Have you known any moment when you were neither this nor that, when you were just in between, just in the middle, right in the middle? Mind moves from one pole to another immediately. If you are happy, sooner or later you will move to unhappiness, and you will move immediately: the happiness will disappear and you will be unhappy.
If you are feeling good, sooner or later you will feel bad, and there is no point where you stay in between. You move immediately from this to that. Just like the pendulum of an old clock, you move from left to right, from right to left, and the pendulum goes on moving. There is a secret law: when the pendulum is going to the left, it appears to be going to the left, but it is gathering momentum to go right. When it is going to the left, it is gathering energy, momentum, to go right; when it is going right, it is gathering momentum to go left. So what appears is not the whole. When you are becoming happy, you are gathering momentum to be unhappy. So whenever you are laughing, the moment is not far away when you will be weeping.
In Indian villages, the mothers know this, so when a child starts laughing too much they say, “Stop him; otherwise he will weep.” It is bound to be so. If a child is so happy, the next step can be nothing but unhappiness. Thus, they stop him. Otherwise he will be unhappy. But the same applies to the reverse, and that is not known. When a child is weeping and you try to stop him, you are not only stopping his weeping; you are stopping his next step. He cannot be happy now. When a child is weeping, allow him. Help him to weep more so that when weeping is finished he has gathered momentum. Now he can move to the right, he can be happy.
Now psychoanalysts say that when a child is weeping and screaming, don’t stop him, don’t try to persuade him, don’t distract him. Don’t try to focus his mind somewhere else; don’t bribe him to stop. Don’t do anything. Just remain silent near him, and allow him to weep and cry and scream so that he can move easily to happiness. Otherwise, neither will he be able to weep nor will he be able to be happy. That is how we all have become. We cannot do anything. The smile is half-hearted, the tear is also half-hearted; everything is confusing.
But this is the natural law of mind. It moves from one pole to another. This technique is to change this natural law: “OH BELOVED, PUT ATTENTION NEITHER ON PLEASURE NOR ON PAIN, BUT BETWEEN THESE.” Any of the polarities can be chosen, and try to be just in between. What can you do to be in between? How will you be in between? One thing: when pain is there, what can you do? When pain is there, you want to escape from it. You don’t want it; you try to go away from it.
Your effort is to go to the opposite – to be happy, to be joyful.
When there is happiness, what do you do? Your effort is to cling to it so that the other pole may not enter – to CLING to it! When happiness is there you cling; when pain is there you escape. This is the natural attitude. If you want to change this natural law and transcend it, when pain is there don’t try to escape. Remain with it. You will disturb the whole natural mechanism. You have a headache: remain with it. Close your eyes, meditate on the headache; remain with it. Don’t do anything. Just be a witness; don’t try to escape.
Tags: Stay In The Middle
